Season's Greetings!

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

I am terrible for not posting in months. It's been months, hasn't it? 

I've been busy plugging away at making lesson plans, teaching, and getting through the daily things.
I had a yucky head cold for about a month - from late October to mid November. 

I've gone so Seoul a few times, but mostly stayed around town here. 

Last I remember was that I promised pictures from Seoraksan. Ooops! I'm a turd for forgetting! Maybe I'll get to that over the short time off I have before winter camp. 

The biggest thing that's happened is I have a new laptop. I'm still getting adjusted. 

Oh wait, that's the second biggest thing. The biggest thing is that I've signed a new contract for another year teaching here in Korea. 

December 12th there was a decent snow fall. We've had a lot of snow here - for South Korea. I was eating a quick meal before an English teacher's meeting and was just thinking to myself "It's like it can't decide if it wants to rain or snow." when it suddenly started coming down in ginormous flakes. It was a slushy, snowy mess, beautiful but eww. The next morning was ice. 

They don't really treat the roads or get out snowplows. I finally saw some snow tactics in action kind of last week when it was really hazardous. They seem to put down dirt, and use their backhoes and other big construction stuff to pull/push snow. This is on the highway... regular city streets can fend for themselves. 

This was an early December evening as I was let off from my carpool. The sunsets here can be very nice. Next semester I won't be seeing these ginseng people every day. I'm transferring schools!

I went to Lotteria with Jongsoo. 

What is Lotteria? Well - it's South Korea's version of McDonald's! 

It's decidedly for Korean tastes. They have a "wild shrimp burger" and this "corn salad." It came free with the 18,900 won fried chicken (it's a big basket of fried chicken). I tasted the corn salad. It pretty much tastes like macaroni salad - but with corn no macaroni.

This. This was a chocolate-needs day. Sadly, the brownies are only about an inch cube each. For 2,500 won you only get 4 or 6 of these things... I forget.. all I know was 1 was certainly not enough and ended up eating about 3 in one go - such was the need for chocolate. 

The packaging of these brownies really makes me laugh though. Each wrapper is a different design and says stuff like "My Love" and "Dear Sweet Brownie."

Anyway it's Christmas eve here. I'm making pie crust and waiting for the pizza guy to come. 

It's going to be a very merry dairy-mas!